watch...and wonder

the definition of incompetence is repeatedly redefined

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/view/main.html

freedome 4 all

oh Alex, you do suck some dogs balls....Alex "I'm the greatest foreign minister in the greatest government ever, of all time, ever" downer, celebrates the 5th anniversary by changing history, yet again....

once again in the face of overwhelming evidence Alex whimpers:

It was, nevertheless, the right decision.

First, had Saddam's regime succeeded in keeping UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq and defying the will of the international community — including the US — he would have been greatly empowered.

Yes, but Alex, your decision to invade drove the weapons inspectors out, you drove the inspectors out, they all begged for more time to do their job, they went to all the places pointed out to them by Doug Fieths creepy henchman, and in 100% of the cases, found nothing. Add to that the admission that the US had infiltrated the UN Inspectors and were using the inspections to gather intelligence on Iraq.

If the weapons inspectors had been given the time to do their jobs, and they revealed the truth, that Saddam was talking through his arse about his capabilities, how does that "embolden" him. It may win me admiring glances at the pub when I'm pissed and I brag about the 26 inches of man meat in my pants, its a different story when I have to drop em in full view of the pub and the evidence is less than overwhelming.

We went to war because a tyrant had an inflated ego? Gee Mr Greatness, you are definitely in line for a bit of an invasion.

1991...Saddam had survived the mightiest military coalition in history and by surviving he had "won". This perception emboldened him.

Oh Alex, even Dik Cheney said at the time that invading Iraq would have been a catastrophe, you don't like this little game you now have to play of "Justify Your War" five years on, but your happy to re-write the one from 1991. One again, invading a country coz a dictator has a big ego, don't cut much mustard gas.

If, in 2003, he had survived yet again...

Survived what? Your invasion? So he would have had his ego stroked if his extremely depleted ramshackle army had beaten yours, or if he had of been forced, like the previous ten years to allow the weapons inspectors to do their job.

Based on what the UN inspectors had reported, and the analysis of several intelligence agencies, most of the world would have believed that he had survived with weapons of mass destruction. On the basis of what we do know now, he would enthusiastically be rebuilding his WMD capabilities today.

Oh Alex, the weapons inspectors found that he didn't have the capabilities and Hans Blix said so, Hans also apologised for not saying so more forcefully in the run up to the war, saying that he didn't realise that his more diplomatic language would be taken by people like Alex and used out of context, just like Alex is doing now.

So Alex, with that sparkling hindsight of yours, don't you remember that Saddam was boxed in on all sides, had US jets constantly bombing him whenever a President felt a dip in his polls, a sanctions regime that classified infants humidifiers as WMD components, weapons inspectors up the ying yang and the only people breaking the sanctions were our very own representatives of the Australian Government DFAT through the guise of AWB.

"the analysis of several intelligence agencies", you don't mean "stupidest man on the face of the earth" Doug Feiths little crew and the British dossier based on an undergrads term paper, you don't mean the same dossier that warned that Saddam could launch a WMD attack on Europe in as little as 45 minutes that really meant to say "could fire a conventional weapon somewhere in the vicinty" but the words WMD accidentally were typed in front of, you don't mean the people who got everything wrong and hyped what little they did find till the blue sky turned a bloody shade of red, you don't mean the Germans who held your main source of intelligence, the Iraqi defector "Curveball" whom they described as a "a pathological liar" and "mentally ill". Just what agencies are you talking about, its not ASIO or any of ours, you've already stated that we relied entirely on US and British intelligence.

Second, a still-more powerful Saddam would have been a major threat to his own people and the Middle East.

That's assuming that Saddam had somehow had his ego inflated by fulfilling an entirely hypothetical scenario which was never going to be played out in the first place, so not a good start to point two Alex. Did you spend all day during your tenure as FM worrying about who could use a hug, were you worried about other dictators egos and their fragility, did you have at the ready the card of a good psychologist or life counsellor for those that you thought could do with a bit of a boost? Any wonder AWB fell into the "I cant recall" when you had such pressing worries on your mind.

There was no more brutal dictator on Earth in 2003 than Saddam Hussein.

Would you really like to go through a list of Dictators at the time, Charles Taylor was eating the flesh of his opponents and slaughtering them by the thousands and we accepted him as a good buddy. In the Congo three million were being slaughtered, in Burma, in Chechnya and other former Soviet republics masses were being put to death and disappeared. By 2003, Saddam was brutal, no question, but THE most brutal, cmon, and with such a fragile ego.

To act in a way that made a hero out of a man who had murdered about half-a-million of his own people, declared war on two of his neighbours and supported terrorists from Abu Nidal (the Osama bin Laden of the '70s and '80s) to Palestinian suicide bombers would have been sheer folly.

Sorry, just who was it that you speak of that considered him a "hero"? Can you name a few, outside of a few hardline Palesinians who the world ignores anyway? I also love the fact that the same people who put together the stats on the 1/2 a million figure are the same people Alex said were completely wrong and maybe just a bit batshit crazy, when it came to the 300,000 to 600, 000 figure of Iraqi dead in post invasion Iraq.

His two wars, we, the US and Britain all supported Saddam in his invasion of Iran, provided material support and cheered from the sides at the insanity. His second war, against Kuwait, despite the recent re-writing of history by the then US Ambassador, could at the very least be seen as having been tolerated at the start by our allies the US, "we have no position on your dispute with Kuwait" was the US answer when Saddam asked if he could invade.

Alex, why mention Osama, Abu Nidal was not the Osama of the 1970's, any more than Yasser Arafat was. When Nidal was in Iraq, he was an old worn out ex-fighter, hooked to a dialysis machine, under the watchful eye of Saddams secret police under house quarantine. Yes, Saddam did support the Palestinian cause, occasionally providing $20,000 to the families of suicide bombers, but not always, despite boasting a lot about it. If supporting the Palestinians is so wrong, I would suggest that we should have invaded the entire Arab world to follow your logic.

At a time when moderate Muslims have needed all the help they could get from the West in the struggle against Islamic extremism, there is no doubt an empowered Saddam would have been a major obstacle to successful Arab-Western co-operation.

And invading a sovereign Arab country against the advice of nearly every Arab regime and over their strenuous objections and with nearly 90% of Arabic people against the idea, aided that cause how? If you were worried about helping Muslim moderates, wouldn't encouraging and insisting upon free elections in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Egypt, or even just a modicum of freedom of the press, have done a thousand times better.

It is often claimed that Saddam had no links with al-Qaeda:

No Alex, its just a fact, not a claim. Al Queda wanted Saddam gone as much as GW Bush did, and said so on many occasions.

not because he himself was committed to the ideology of extremist Islamists, but on the time-worn principle that my enemy's enemy is my friend.

Just like the US is now doing with Sunnis insurgents in Iraq, a process you applaud wholeheartedly, despite the fact that it will come back to bite them very hard on the arse. Then again, its the reason why we supported Saddam in the 1980's against Iran.

Third, there is no doubt the Americans made some mistakes.

Funny, I don't seem to remember you pointing this out to the US at the time, you said the US were 100% right in the way they were going about it, maybe you should have said something when there was time to fix things. Oh well, you were clearly fretting about Saddams id and super-ego balance, now just how many personal issues you subscribe to the old tyrant.

The most common criticism is that they pursued the de-Baathification policy too zealously. Initially, the Americans wanted a modest de-Baathification process, knowing that many of the people who made Iraq work at all were Baath Party members because it was impossible to hold any position of authority without being in the party. The Americans only planned to remove from office the top two levels of the bureaucracy — that is, ministers and deputy ministers or their equivalents. Once the Iraqi Interim Government took over,......

The newest reason why the Iraq adventure failed, we did great, it was the Iraqis who really failed, we were brilliant, the Iraqis were shit.

Bremer and the US were in complete control, they issued the orders for the complete de-bathification of Iraq, not as Alex tells it, the Iraqis. Oh Alex, what a big fat whopper you just laid. If you cant say "I don't remember", don't lie, just say "it slipped my memory" or "I cant recall, sir". Next you will tell us that Bremer only meant to get rid of those parts of the Iraqi Army that wore red boots, not the whole army, it was the Iraqis who insisted that we allow 500,000 men with guns to flood the unemployment offices of Iraqs Centrelink. Those Iraqis must have been just complete fuckwads to have a genius like Bremer giving such nuanced, precise orders and then completely ballsing them up. As Alex says "Arguably, the Americans should have done more to restrain them, assuming they could."

The more serious criticism of the Americans is that they should have sent more troops to Iraq in the first place. This is the view held by, among others, then US secretary of state Colin Powell and Senator John McCain.

Alex, Alex, Alex, this is the 21st Century, I don't need to consult the only person in my village who can read to run down to the Archbishop who then runs to the King to find out the real facts, I gots google, here is what your John McCain said in the run up to war

"But the fact is, I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past. But any military man worth his salt is going to have to prepare for any contingency, but I don't believe it's going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991."
John McCain, September 15, 2002.

"It's clear that the end is very much in sight...It won't be long. It, it'll be a fairly short period of time."John McCain, April 9, 2003.

"I'm confident we're on the right course."John McCain, March 7, 2004.

"I think he strengthened our national defenses. I think he has a good team around him."John McCain, on President Bush, September 3, 2004.

"I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence."John McCain, on whether he had confidence in Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, December 15, 2004.

Alex if you are going to give a man as a reference, a/ make sure you know what he is talking about and b/make sure that he knows what he is talking about, in this case, you got two for two wrong. Never mind, maybe it was the Iraqis who you got to help with the wordprocessor thingy who completely fucked up, again.

The fact is ol Mr Straight Talk express can express all opinions at all times and still be seen as right at least some of the time, remarkable.

Also Colin Powell when asked if he would do it all over again, knowing what he knows now, his answer was an unequivocal "No".

The consequence of withdrawing before securing a stable Iraq would be genocide. The country would almost certainly descend into a free for all that would make last year's violence look tame. Added to that would be the intrusion of neighbouring powers unable to stand aside as their brothers and sisters were slaughtered. That would threaten a full-scale regional conflict.

Alex, your not trying to tell us that Turkey may invade Iraq, heaven forbid. Your not saying that the Shiite led government in Iraq would lay on red carpet for the Iranian President, while all US/British/Australian dignitres have to sneak in under the cover of darkness unanouced and still require a massive body guard even in the green zone? My god, never. Why do nearly 75% of Iraqis want the US led forces out immediately and say that they are causing more problems than they are solving?

Some say because the bloodshed in Iraq is a function not just of al-Qaeda terrorism but also of Sunni-on-Shiite civil conflict we should leave the Iraqis to fight it out.

Some say that fox news is fair and balanced, some say that enemas with ground glass are dangerous, some (including me) say that you are both a present and retrospective liar of little talent and a distorted, convient memory. Even the most optomistic, stretched assesment of Al Queda in Iraq (as very distinct from Al Queda) from the Pentagon says that they contribute no more than 3% of the violence. That means that 97% of the fighting currently going on IS "Sunni-on-Shiite civil conflict".

but to abandon 27 million Iraqis altogether now would be a terrible act of folly.

Oh Alex, you speak of the Iraqis as though you actually care what happens to them, even though you blame them for the present troubles. You have abandoned the over 20% of Iraqis who have fled the country, leaving only some 22 million plus to fight for survival. You have through your actions, lies and incompetence abandoned them, but thats ok, Im sure no one will notice if you just tell enough people your newest version of the facts.

It wasn't right to turn our backs on civil war in Rwanda in 1994 when 800,000 people were slaughtered; it wouldn't have been right to turn our backs on civil conflict in the Balkans; the world has done too little to stop civil conflict in Darfur. How, then, is it right to turn our backs on the conflict in Iraq? Clearly it is not.

Lets see how many troops do we have in the above countries? How brave you are Little Alex now that you can re-write it all, I for one cannot wait to wipe my very ample arse on you up coming biography, the fact is my shit does stink, and that will be so much more truthful than anything contained in those pages.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/toppling-saddam-was-right-for-iraq-and-the-world/2008/03/18/1205602383436.html


...................................
Will the first Oz victim of the credit meltdown in the US be Gunns new, and as yet unfinanced, pulp mill?


Members of the Australian Olympic team will be forced to sign an agreement that means they will have to ask permission to comment on human rights during the Beijing Games.



Australian Olympic officials say athletes will not be gagged from making political comments, but they may be sent home if they do not ask permission first.
One part of a 53-page agreement that all athletes going to Beijing will have to sign says: "Unless and until otherwise directed by the Chef de Mission, athletes may comment or communicate with the media only in relation to their events, prospects and performances at the games."

...................................................

Meet Mr 10%'s shadow parliamentary secretary for families and community services, Senator Bernardi



THE Opposition's parliamentary secretary for families has been linked to a scheme that sold financial advice on how divorcees could hide money from their former spouses.



http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23399707-2702,00.html

......................................................................



John McCain = 4 more years of the Bush Whitehouse



In 1999/2000 rode around in his bus with the words "Straight Talk Express" prominently scrawled across its glistening surface. Those long ago days he refused to pander to those far right religious bigots so beloved of the Bush Team, utter scumbags like Jerry Falwell, held moderate views on gun control, lobbyists and abortion, and was not afraid to speak just a little of his mind on these topics. Unlike all the other republican candidates, he seemed to be genuinly unafraid of aleinating the base of the Republican party, speaking his mind and damn the fund raising.


We all know what happened to him, on the verge of winning the slot, his campaign was undone by rumours of him spawning black babies, the mysterious rumours of his unpatriotic behavior during the vietnam war (the tapes of his rants against the US produced after 2 years of torture at the hands of his Nth Vietnamese captors, resurfaced) and his war record was slyly questioned. All these things seemed to point to the Bush team, McCain even demanded Bush call off his attack dog Rove and repudiate the slurs (Bush just shrugged his shoulders and continued as though it had nothing to do with him).

Of all the Republican candidates running in 2000, McCain stood head and shoulders above them all, yet lost.

Cross to today, the bus is still with us, the slogan is still with us, but the candidate is the palest shadow of his former self, having learnt the valuable lesson that principles are worthless in the face of losing power. The Obama or Clinton camps are going to have a field day with their ability to juxtatpose the "straight talk" brand name against the reality of the Flip Flop Express, going to whoop with delight at all the wonderful remarks the man has made over the past few years which have turned out to be so ver, very, very wrong. While some conservative commentators have pointed out that McCain has consistently stood up to the Bush Whitehouse, and god knows everyone else is fleeing in terror at being branded as even having been in the same state as Bush at the same time, the reality for McCain is that on every issue, McCain is either in lockstep or caved into the Bushies on each and every issue. McCain called for the surge, the President rejected it, when Bush caved in and commited the extra troops, it was labeled the McCain surge, then when it appeared to be failing/making no difference, McCain renounced it, then when it appeared to be having some effect, re re-embrcaed it.

for just a few of McCains flip flops on the war, please read with annoyance the below:

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000979.htm



http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2008/03/mccains_iraq_dilemma.html?nav=rss_blog

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/18/notebook/main3948777.shtml

bound to happen

I really don't believe in leaders, though I tend to see the point of parking meters. . .

.....MICHAEL MOORCOCK

.......................................

Beihai Park, Beijing Winter 1984, I can recall them quite clearly despite my consistent hangovers, two hunched old women wrapped in their thick Mao blue fake fur lined overcoats, I can remember mapping out in my head a space in front of the two of them the size of my normal stride and counted as they shuffled through my imaginary lines. One required twelve steps, the other just ten to walk the same distance as one of my strides, I sat on the chilly bench next to a local and he smiled (and probably spat, as was the continuous custom) as i marvelled at my first sight of the last living remnants of Imperial China, bound feet. As they slowly made their way past my seat, I expected to see their faces etched in permanent pain, yet saw none as one of the elderly women turned from her conversation, noticed me and let out a stream of abuse in Chinese and spat at my feet. This was to be just one of the six or seven times I was spat on during my stay, and all for the same reason, the woman with the bound feet mistook me for Russian in my giant winter coat and excessively furry Marmot hat.

My local began to gesticulate wildly, and shout out, the only word I could make out was, "Ow Dow Li Ahh" which I repeated in my near perfect imitation of the Chinese word for Australia, the old woman blushed, smiled, patted my face and I can only imagine apologised. Then she and her companion shuffled on slowly into the wintry depths of the pavilion. I honestly didn't expect to ever see, except in photos in a museum, bound feet, that ancient practice of wrapping female infants feet in layers of bandages so that they would not grow beyond 6 inches,

for the Imperial Chinese it was a sensual to them as a boob job is to us.

The Chinese Government of today has hobbled itself as surely as those bound feet with its desire to hold the Olympics. Bindings of the tyranny of a single voice to speak for all Chinese, swathed in the tightening bandages of the suppression of dissent in Tibet, the inevitable corruption that comes from all such centralised power as is vested in the Peoples Party, the failure of the rule of law to be applied equally to all, the failure to develop a free press or transparent government or judiciary, the complete failure to allow even mild dissension to rise without the heavy hand of the state to crush it.

These things deform a state and no matter what the progress made on the economic front, they twist a society from the inside and eventually make the old saying, a state divided against itself must fall, become a truism. But then that can take many years and meanwhile the state learns to walk on its hobbled feet, even after a while, comes to see the situation as natural, a billion voices from a hundred separate ethnic backgrounds, that can only speak with a single Han accent is the real voice of modern china, as modern china is told.

Ross Terrill describes modern China as "an Empire pretending to be a nation" and Tibet since 1951 has fallen under the spell of that pretence, as has the rest of the worlds governments which have refused to recognise any other government ruling Tibet save China. The current uprising in Tibet was inevitable the closer the Beijing Olympics came, the focus on China from the outside world and the hope that granting it the worlds premier sporting event would lead to a freer more open nation was bound to be tested by those living under the yoke of Han oppression. The Dalai Lama, after so many years of counselling a peaceful solution has conspicuously not condemned the frustrated citizens of his homeland nor come out against the violence, merely pointed out the reasons for it and condemned the cultural genocide taking place for what it is.

With Tibet now closed to the worlds prying eyes, the true Chinese response to Tibet's uprising will take a long while to filter out and of course be met with that single voice announcing as it has, "that not one single live bullet" was fired into the rioting crowds. Reports of 100's of dead will be met with official statistics saying that 10 or 12 "terrorists" were killed, and depending upon your political bent and what you can gain from the outcome, you will believe one or the other, the truth here is as deformed as any other object wrapped so tightly.

And of course, no tyrannical state these days can help itself in clothing its tyranny in the language of the War On Terror, western Chinese separatists are going to be allied, as we saw last week, with Al Queda and all demonstrations or critics will be contaminated and conflated with the Bushy white house rhetoric. The farcical WoT now cloaks a myriad of tyrants in the emperors new clothes.

For anyone travelling to Beijing for the Olympics, play a little game when your standing in Tianajim Square, get out your stop watch and every time you see a banner hoisted aloft, count the seconds before a mob of plain clothes "Beijinians" subsumes them in a human pyramid. And wait for the unofficial reports of the round ups in the count down to the torch being lit. As with the "terrorist" hijacking of an Australian tour bus last month, don't wait for the explanation for the actions to come from anywhere except the State, and then don't believe a word about "madman", al queda or any other word that may come from official sources.

For all my deep, deep love of China, I know a savage, self inflicted, deformity when I see one.

if you want my bumper sticker response:

Free Tibet, Not Hippies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

.....................................

Speaking of the ever lovely franchise of the WoT, the War For Peace that is Iraq, its just passed its fifth birthday, and like the over sized, jagged kidney stone that it is, the passing has just brought howls of pain to my nethers.

After five long bloody years, we still don't have a clue why we started it in the first place.

Dick Cheny this week called it a “successful endeavor” and boasted of the “phenomenal” improvements, and as if that were not the height of delusion, still insists that despite a report out last week from the Pentagon declaring that there were NO, I must repeat, NO ties between Saddam and Al Queda, Ol, "Shoot em in the face and see if they apologise" Dik, has said that the report "conclusively proves" that there were. Not only that but he repeated his favourite bed time fairytale, that Mohamed Atta met with Saddam's operatives in Prague before the 9/11 attacks, even though it was debunked and has been completely debunked by every agency, every country, every pre-school kid in the entire World.

But then re-writing history to suit your own point of view is the natural habit of all supporters of the Iraq Fiasco, why just last week our ex- foreign minister, Downer repeated what has been told for the last few years by Howard, Cheny, the big furry Bush, Blair, Richard Perle and all the neo-cons, a very big fat lie aimed at revising the historical memory. ergo:

"Prior to the invasion the French and the Germans believed that Saddam had WMD's."

When you hear that little gem pop up in conversation, here's a couple of questions:

How many troops did the French and Germans send to invade with the Coalition of the Willing?

Why did the French describe Colin Powells assertions of facts at the UN as "thin" and "unsubstantiated"?

Why if the French and Germans felt as strongly about the threat from Saddam as you do, did they insist upon UN inspectors being given more time to get to the truth of the facts as presented?

Weren't the French and Germans 100% correct in insisting that UN inspectors be allowed to do the job the UN gave them, and if they were allowed to do their job, wouldn't the French and Germans be 100% right in their stance not to join the invasion?

Point to the documents that the French and German governments presented that unequivocally state that Saddam had WMD? Bet ya cant find one that isn't filled with qualifiers. Or calls for letting the UN inspectors do their jobs.

You can have your own opinion, but you cant re-write history by making up your own facts.

The other little canard that is constantly being trotted out by our Ex-pm and his favourite poodle Alexander, and been used by such sterling luminaries as Paul "Sorry, My fuck up" Bremer, Dick Cheny and the man who just don't look like he wants to be there, Pres Bush, is the answer to the very simple question.

Knowing all that you know now about the Iraq Invasion and subsequent occupation, would you still do it?

The answer from these fools is always the same. Yes, of course, Im insulted that you even ask such a ludicris question.

So my question is equally as simple, knowing what you know about Enron and its jagged, suicide inducing, pension plan wiping, collapse, would you today, recommend buying shares in the company?

Can I sell you some $170.00 a share?

..............................................

Where are all the free marketeers today, maybe in bed with a cold??

ah the good old days of the savings and loan collapses come back to haunt the market. My favourite images of the S&L scandal that exposed Reganonomics for what it is, where the sights of bulldozers ploughing under entire newly built resorts once the real value of these phony valuations where brought into the light of day. What one day was worth $100 million on the books of the West Texas S&L, today aint even worth the price of hauling away for firewood, sound like anything that may have happened over the last few weeks. Give you a hint, last year the stock peaked at $170.00 a share, last week it was $65.00, last night it was $50.00, right now....$2.00

NICK PARSONS, NAB CAPITAL:There's a range of lending that's been done against some fairly stretched asset valuations....trying to put a proper valuation on the assets that banks have already got.

every global and supernational organisation is going to be telling us that the fundamentals are sound and we don't need to worry. Well, I think last Friday's events showed us we should take those sorts of comments with a bit of a pinch of salt.

....$2 a share is derisory when you compare it with the $35 at which it closed on Friday, the $65 at which it opened on Friday morning. The reason it didn't go down to zero because frankly there would have been a feeding frenzy for the lawyers.

ALI MOORE: Indeed, you talk about how fragile it is and just tonight our time, morning your time Lehmann Brothers has had to come out and say that their liquidity position is OK?

NICK PARSONS: They're all OK as of now. As of this moment we don't know what those liquidity positions would look like in an hour's time, let alone 24 hours or a week.

(today the shares began to slide on the back of the "everything is wonderful over here" statement issued by the bank, market rule of thumb, if you need to tell everyone its all fine, then there must be some problems)

..............................................

John McCain the Straight Talk Express, some people are starting to notice those speed bumps, as he hits them, the make the sound "flip-flop-fwap"...lets all drink to embracing far right religious bigots. Yeee haw..thats some straight shootin tex...

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14763.html

and now for the best of his foreign policy analysts, more neo-cons and still more neo-cons, the same people who if they repeated your name back to you, you would feel the need to call your mother to confirm that its correct, coz they ain't bin right on one damn thing they ever said, period.

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/03/17/mccain-advisers/

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/

Meanwhile Fox lets you know the rules for smearing in the coming election if Obama wins, before you can hitch up your skis to the next Swift boat....

http://foxattacks.com/blog/32906-fox-goes-wright-after-obama

http://foxattacks.com/facts/obama

Ive weighed both cheeks and it is true, my arse IS more "Fair and Balanced"

h

To celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Israel, I'm inviting anyone to draw the borders of the country in question.

First to get the answer correct wins a two state solution.

Hint: If you engulf Egypt in the drawing, you are biblically correct, but will not win more than the love of the bush whitehouse and evangelical christians everywhere.

.........................................................................................................

On the back of these shameful scenes

The issue that prompted the huge turnout was a planning application for a new school catering for 1200 students - not just any school, but a school for Muslims. And these residents weren’t having a bar of it.

WOMAN: Sure we are racist if you call it racist not accepting a community that also happens to bear, they’ve got terrorists amongst them, Okay? We can’t say they haven’t, they have. If we let them in here they want to be here because they can go and hide in all their country little farmhouses.

MAN 2: Filthy grubs. Dirty filthy grubs.
MAN 3: No-one wants you here.
MAN 4: F**k off wogs, go back to your own country Mohamed.
MAN 2: We pay our tax mate and we don't want ...

The Australia I thought we left behind, is it just another of Howard's legacies or just something we glossed over for so long.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2181743.htm

Comes this:

A FORMER employee at an Alice Springs hostel at the centre of a racism row said staff were told not to accommodate Aborigines. "We were told that we don't let Aboriginal people stay here," said Sarah, 22, who worked at Haven from July until October last year.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/worker-tells-of-hostel-racism/2008/03/12/1205126018809.html

BOYCOTT:

1/ Haven Backpackers Hostel, Alice Springs

2/ Adventure Tours Australia

http://www.adventuretours.com.au/company-profile-and-contacts

Contact this fuckwit to explain why his ever changing statements are at odds with your own perceptions.

ATA's Greg Zammit issued a statement saying an internal investigation found the group decided to leave of its own accord and was not pressured.

Greg Zammit

Marketing Director

301 Weekday Cross Building

Pilcher Gate, Nottingham NG1 1QF

United Kingdom

Phone: +44 7799 415980

Fax: +44 115 9241389

greg@adventuretours.com.au

.....................................................................

Like a rottweiler on a newborn, I embrace hypocrisy in all its wonderful myriad forms, to me holding diametrically opposing views, while living and breathing both is the natural state of mankind (women are very different, they believe that there is no such thing as hypocrisy, all that matters is you listen and agree with them on all points, then call you spineless or soulless for doing so).

Hence I can do good works by training Alzheimer's patients to work as tour guides for blind Japanese tourists in my fair city, while at the same time baiting bear traps with cuddly scented wombats and koalas to ensnare those same tourists in my cities quaint alleyways. I see it as a bit of yin and yang, with maybe a natural cultural bias for the yin side of the equation.

Or my stance on the next US election, where I support Hillary (not over Obama, but along side) while at the same time feeling queasier and queasier the longer the campaign goes on, Keith Oberman probably sums up many of my feelings the best (he doesn't completely coz he miss's out on her raging neo-con'ish hawkishness)

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/12/countdown-special-comment-sen-clinton-this-is-not-a-campaign-strategy-this-is-a-suicide-pact/

But then there's the Republicans who have elevated hypocrisy to a level where it is now obviously imprinted into their limpid sperm and ovum as they call for the resignation of a Democrat Governor of NY for spending vast sums of money on keeping young women clothed and sheltered in a free market way, while refusing to sack several of their own colleagues for doing the exact same thing, after all Larry Craig just sucked dick while sponsoring anti-gay legislation. CNN can even brought on a republican senator who had his own brand of free market love exposed in 1999 (he didn't resign) to call for a good old sacking, and its so natural that no one even bothers to mention the blatant disregard of gooses and ganders being fed the same diet.

Just sometimes those same fools who are given the right to make the wrong choice, the elector's, find it all just a bit too blatant, just find the shit that's being stuffed way down their throats hard to swallow. Like the voters in much respected Dennis Hassert's (i have no respect for the fuck, but that doesn't mean he isn't by some lump of gelatin flavoured DNA glob) who refused by a small margin to elect Hassert's anointed successor, a republican running an anti-immigrant platform, who poured millions into a series of anti-immigrant groups,

http://www.aicfoundation.com/

while at the same time earning the money he poured into such groups by employing illegal immigrants in his factories at $3.23 an hour.

Or take the ........................I can go on for hours, no really, I sure can...loose brained, uber-bigot, Republican Senator King (the new Santorum, just not quite as smart, maybe not even dan quayle smart) who called into question Obama's patriotism for not wearing an American flag lapel pin, repeatedly and given a shitload of airtime on half a dozen networks, all while not wearing a US flag lapel pin...huh? Holy fuck Blowjobman, lets see you do that to yourself again, yep Im giving up my life of crime....hours....honestly

But what about something like this, a president, a whitehouse stuffed full of highly paid, extremely partisan advisors, a presidency which in the presidents words "will be thanked for all they've done in 150 years times, ....like Lincoln." When absolutely everything they have said or done has been a total and complete clusterfuk, from their half arsed response to 9/11, to their fully arsed Iraq adventure, their stewardship of the US economy (they inherited a budget surplus when they arrived in 2000, they stand to leave a several trillion $ debt when the monkey stops fiddling with its organ and turns its talons on these vultures), the much vaunted US prestige, so beloved of our ex-PM Weasill Extraordinaire, has never been at so low an ebb.

What about this, a classified legal opinion given by one of the Bush whitehouse Christian College trained lawyers

The President, exercising his constitutional authority under article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority under article II.

The president can wipe his arse on the US Constitution because the president determines what he can wipe his own arse on, constitutionally.

The origins of the word hypocrisy come from the Greek which means "play-acting", "acting out", "feigning, dissembling" or "an answer". Surely this then, this bubble the Bushies are living in, this fantastical notion that they will be vindicated by that notoriously unforgiving, constantly re-written re-invented whore, history, is the ultimate in true hypocrisy. And the idea that one flip flopping, religious zealot arse kissing, one time straight talker John McCain will embrace this legacy and is still given a possibility to win, is just laughable beyond words, but then there is the near impossible idea that the battle between Hillary and Obama, may just hand it to him on a very fractured plate.

The again, I can also see the sense in Hillary saying to Obama, well if you think this is bad, you just wait till the Republican slime start to ooze their vapid games on your political arse, then tell me I'm being negative.

“The effects of a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will reach beyond the borders of those two countries,” Mr. Bush said. “It will show others what’s possible. And we undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That’s why we’re doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

Its truly to stupid to be called stupid, I can only conclude that the bubble he lives in is a nitrogen one and we are all divers just rushing to the surface in the hope of escaping the noxious odour emanating from his presence, only to emerge blind and crippled by its lasting presence.

I am setting up a shop of hate, wont you come peruse a world full of fine wares.